Starman Junior
by DragonRaiderX9
Summary: Starman Junior was a special prototype, built for one purpose. Now, having had that purpose ripped away from him, he seeks to reconcile his new purpose with his desire to fulfill what he was made for.


It was supposed to have been a simple mission. This town, which the Master despised so utterly, was to be completely destroyed, and yet not approached. The Master never made clear why either of these were to be, because there was never any need for him to do so.

The Master's orders are absolute.

Our invasion was meant to be subtle, at first. Find a region that was largely isolated, and covertly conquer it. Gather enough humans to learn about them and their limits, build a superior army, and finally begin to conquer the planet in earnest.

We came with Mook, squid-like creatures capable of incredible psychic power known as PSI. However, the bulk of the army was made up of robot drones, led and manufactured by Starmen: sleek, humanoid metal soldiers equipped with powerful laser weapons.

The Starmen…

Even we do not know where we came from. We are fully robotic, and yet different from the robot drones. We are capable of thought, like the Mooks. It is even theorized that we may have once been organic creatures.

It doesn't matter.

We are capable of thought. We have always been instructed by the Master to make use of our intelligence to serve the mission as best we can. He has told us that contemplating our origin is a waste of thought. Our thoughts are, again, best served on the mission.

The Master's orders are absolute.

One of the most important parts of our invasion plan was served by the Mooks. They would pool their powers and send out a psychic signal. This signal would affect not only weak-minded humans and most animals, turning them violent, but would also bring inanimate objects to "life". These now "living" objects would attack indiscriminately.

This brings me again to the aforementioned town. The Master ordered that our forces stay away from that town. Yet we could not ignore it. It was far enough away to be outside the range of the psychic signal, but close enough that they would notice our efforts. Something had to be done.

It was for this reason that I was created. I was a peculiar Starman, the only one of my kind. I was smaller than the others, lightly armed and armored. However, I was capable of something no other Starman could do.

I could use PSI. In theory, at least. I was only equipped with the ability to send out the same signal as the Mooks. I remember my activation well. It was the first and only time I ever saw the Master.

He was being addressed by a Starman Super, the most powerful kind of Starman in our army. The Starman in question was the one who oversaw my creation. He asked the Master why we could not utilize a more direct approach. Surely a few Starmen and Mooks could make short work of such a small town. Failing that, a Mook could easily perform the job. The Master was furious at being questioned. He explained that a Mook, if captured, could give away vital information. A Starman, however, could self-destruct if need be.

Looking back, I remember a variety of emotions on the Master's face. I felt as though he wanted that town in particular to be stamped into oblivion, but did not wish to witness the destruction for himself, nor have any soldier of use to him to be there. Even now, I cannot fathom why that would be, but still it does not matter.

The Master's orders are absolute.

Thus it was that I was deployed to a small building north of the town in the dead of night. I began my signal, directing it south to blanket the town. As the sun rose, already the town was in chaos. The building I had made base in was surrounded by animals, nearly all of which began to rampage. Besides that, and unforeseen effect took place. Humans, it seemed, buried the bodies of their dead. Bodies that would still be affected by my signal. The dead rose from the ground and trampled through the town.

It was the humans' own fault, of course. Being so inefficient about death. Wasting valuable land on such a thing. From what I could tell, they even placed the corpses inside boxes, preventing the remains from dissolving into the soil. They truly deserved such a fate.

My efforts continued unabated for several days, until a human came to my building. A human child, seemingly on the cusp of what they call adolescence. A child who wore a red cap, and a blue and yellow striped shirt. He held in his hands a wooden club. Future research would identify the object as a baseball bat. Overall, an insignificant threat. I deemed myself fully capable of terminating him.

I stared him directly in his eyes and assumed a stance that organic creatures found threatening. I had but one thing to say to the red-capped child.

"I am Starman Junior."

Logic failed me, at that time. This minor threat, this child with the red cap, defeated me utterly. Before I was destroyed, I returned to my transportation pod and made a quick escape.

While my mission was a failure, there was much to be learned from it. With the humans established as greater threats, the plans for conquest were sped up. More drones, Starmen, and even some Mooks were deployed away from the mountain that served as our base. The humans must be crushed swiftly. We would need a little more time to weaken the region and build more drones. Then we would strike!

Or rather, they would strike.

I was considered a useless experiment. I was told this to my face without a trace of compassion. Compassion was a waste of thought. I was put in the scrap room, left to rot. My ultimate fate was inconsequential at the moment, and as such no one considered taking the time to deactivate me. I was simply left there. Leaving the room was something that I never considered, despite it not being guarded in any meaningful way. It would mean disobeying orders.

The Master's orders are absolute.

There I sat, surrounded by deactivated drones and Starmen. I don't know for sure how much time passed there, as I did not bother to calculate it. My thoughts were filled only with the boy in the red cap. I found myself overcome with a desire to fight him again. A feeling, unlike any I had experience before, filled me. This feeling made my circuits tingle unpleasantly. I did not enjoy this feeling, and yet I could not bring myself to turn away from it. Only later would I learn that this was an emotion the organic creatures called "anger".

I was a soldier built for one purpose. I was a soldier robbed of his purpose by a child in a red cap. The more I thought about it, the more I was filled with this anger. The more anger I experienced, the more I desired to be sent back out onto the battlefield.

It was, of course, a hopeless desire. I was never to be made use of again. That is what I believed at the time. However, an unforeseen turn of events occurred.

We lost the war.

I did not know this immediately. I knew only that the mothership had suddenly begun moving upwards incredibly quickly. I'm not sure at what point we left the Earth's atmosphere, only that we had been traveling upward long enough for the concept of "up" to cease having meaning.

More time passed. My anger ebbed somewhat, replaced by curiosity. Not nearly enough time had passed for us to have conquered the planet. Likewise, we had been traveling "upward" for far too long to simply be regrouping. Much though I hated to even contemplate the option, it seemed as though we had lost. That was the only possibility that came to mind.

My suspicions were soon confirmed as the door to the scrap room opened. I could only assume that they had come to finally deactivate me, either through someone remembering my existence and wanted it dealt with, or out of boredom. Boredom was not something that was tolerated amongst our ranks. All Starmen and Mooks were strongly encouraged to find ways to make themselves useful at all times. Boredom could easily drive someone to search the scrap room for anything still active.

Two Starmen Supers swept into the room with purpose. Pausing only to glance upon the room, they started towards me as soon as I was spotted. They apprehended me and soon I went offline.

However, to my great surprise, I was not left offline. I found myself in a construction room, linked to a power machine. It soon became clear to me that I had undergone more than a simple repair process. I stood taller now, as tall as any other Starman. My weak shell had been replaced with the same metal as the other Starmen. I was still not quite as heavily armored as my brethren, something I determined by running a self-diagnostic and comparing the results with the schematics of an average Starman. Still, I retained my ability to use PSI. I could sense this right away. This is not a power forgotten easily.

The purpose of my reconstruction was made clear very soon. Our forces had been heavily damaged during the war. The number of Mooks were at an all-time low, and the Blue Starmen were completely wiped out. I never found out why they stopped being produced.

The plan, again, was quite simple. We could only recruit so many Mooks, but Starmen could be produced en masse. Thus, they decided to mass produce the Starman Junior model. My ability to use PSI, originally a means to serve the Master's bizarre orders, had suddenly become incredibly valuable. Starmen are strong and resilient, but have few means of attack outside of their beam weaponry.

Humans were susceptible to extreme temperatures. As such, it was only fitting to equip me with PSI Freeze and PSI Fire, as most Mooks could use. Stronger than ever, I waited patiently as the production line was altered to create an army of Starmen Juniors. No doubt that I would be sent down along with them, to finally do battle with the red-capped child again.

One day before the production line was scheduled to begin operations, everything changed again. Many Starmen Supers came up to me in a most foul mood. They demanded to know where I had been, and why I had seen fit to disobey orders. I told them that I had done no such thing, that I had been here the entire time. They did not believe me, and checked the deployment records. They found that I had been entirely truthful. Even then, I was questioned until other Starmen, who worked on the production line, told them the same thing.

Again, some time passed before I learned the truth. This time, I was told the truth by one of the Starman workers. An idle thought drifted through my mind, that perhaps the weaker Starman models were capable of greater compassion. I dismissed the thought and focused on the tale. Only then did I learn of the bizarre events that had taken place.

We had returned to Earth, hiding behind its moon. We kept constant scans on the planet to learn what we could. It was quiet for the most part, until they received a signal of a Starman Junior active on Earth. This, of course, was impossible. Yet, the scans indicated it to be so. The Starman Junior confronted four life-forms for approximately one minute, before its signal disappeared. They had thought it had been me returning to the mothership, but now they believe the Starman Junior was destroyed.

This revelation had everyone deeply disturbed. How and why did this come to pass? After many more examinations, it was determined that a temporal anomaly had taken place. This other Starman Junior had come to the past. Why? We would never know. What mattered was that the humans were even stronger than we had faced previously. Our plan to crush them with mass-produced Starmen Juniors seemed doomed to fail, even before it started.

Like before, the defeat of a Starman Junior necessitated a change in plans. This time, instead of pressing forward, we opted to hold back even longer. Staying in the mothership, the Mooks had found a way to bathe the planet in their psychic signal. I never learned how that was. Apart from this, we only sent down a few drones to uninhabited regions. The Master himself was working on a secret project of his own. He told us not to interfere with his work and proceed as ordered. I began to have doubts about the Master at this point, for reasons unbeknownst to myself.

It didn't matter.

The Master's orders are absolute.

I was not forgotten this time. I, along with many Starmen and Starmen Supers, descended to Earth. We landed amongst the snow, on a large island to the north. We made a base for ourselves beneath a mysterious stone structure.

Even now, these humans confuse me. What purpose could such a structure serve?

As soon as the base was constructed, they set to work making modifications to my body. I was to be stronger than ever before, than any Starman to come before. Heavily armored with powerful lasers and a built-in shield generator, my body was now adorned with several spikes on my head and shoulders. I thought that I was to be the new vanguard for our army.

I was wrong.

I retained the ability to use PSI, but never were my powers reequipped. Instead, I was used as a prototype for even more powerful models. Swift black models, meant to strike first and strike hard. Mighty gold models adorned with the same spikes I had and the same shield generator. Both were equipped with a powerful PSI technique known as the StarStorm.

I was the basis for both. They were both slow to be built, and would take much time to make suitable numbers of them. That is my purpose, it seems. To stand here silently as a template used to produce even more powerful models. I desired nothing more than to leave and to destroy the red-capped child, but I did not.

The Master's orders are absolute.

This is where I stand, even now. As time passes, I wait for some new order. The days before have been silent, but today is different. An alarm sounds as our based is penetrated. No doubt they are humans looking to take back the other humans that were recently captured. I wait to hear somewhere say that they had been captured, but the alarm kept sounding. Eventually, the other Starmen in the room with me leave, shouting that there are only four of them, and that they could be overcome with numbers.

Four of them? It could not be. We are in a completely different part of the planet. And yet, perhaps these four are the same that destroyed the Starman Junior, what very well might have been myself from the future. I am too curious about these intruders, I can no longer stand and do nothing. I move from my position over to a control panel and bring up the security cameras.

There, surrounded by many Starmen and Starmen Supers, were four children.

It's him! The red-capped child! Someway, somehow, he has found his way here.

To me.

As soon as I notice this, three Starmen rush into the room. They tell me that we are to retreat. The new Starman models are not ready for combat, nor are they numerous enough. I was to retreat with them. I will be necessary to produce even more of the new models. Production will slow considerably without me. They didn't wait for my reply. They went to the storage room and prepared for a mass teleport.

I do not join them, even when I hear the sounds indicating their departure. I continue to watch the security cameras. The human children are making short-work of our Starmen. We were right to make stronger models.

They were right to create me.

I feel anticipation as they draw closer. I feel as if my purpose, my true purpose, will once again come to pass. I am a soldier. I am meant for combat, not to flee.

The Master's orders…are irrelevant.

There is only the fight now. Whatever comes next, I do not care. Even if I am scrapped for insubordination, my purpose drives me so stay.

My circuits tingle again. Not with anger, but something more. Satisfaction? Acceptance? It doesn't matter. Will I be destroyed? Not easily, of that there is no doubt.

At long last, the door opens, and the red-capped child steps inside, flanked by the three others.

I think I might be speaking now. Saying a taunt of some kind. Giving him a fleeting glimpse into the scope of our operations to intimidate him. It doesn't matter. I have only one thing of substance to say to him.

"I am Starman Deluxe."


End file.
